Why do women live longer than men?
Everywhere in the world women live longer than men – but this was not always the case. The available data from rich countries shows that women didn’t live longer than men in the 19th century. What makes women live longer than men, and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we’re left with only limited solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.
In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. For example, there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used to affect women disproportionately a century ago, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, ended up raising women’s longevity disproportionately.
click here) 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.
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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is today.
Let’s look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.
First, there’s an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once tiny, it has increased substantially in the past.
Using the option ‘Change country in the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.